


Starbuck's Soliloquy

by supercantaloupe



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Epilogue, Gen, One Shot, Post-Canon, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24448357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercantaloupe/pseuds/supercantaloupe
Summary: Ishmael isn't the only one left to float on the waves after the wreck of the Pequod; at least, not for a little while.
Kudos: 5





	Starbuck's Soliloquy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Herman Melville's novel (obviously) but also, chiefly, the 2019 Dave Malloy musical adaptation Moby-Dick: a Musical Reckoning; also inspired somewhat by the 2010 opera by Jake Heggie, and some discussion with my good friend Ren.

Wood was put by God on Earth to float. From within the vast swirling darkness, broken planks and barrels bobbed silently up to surface, gasping at air as did poor Starbuck, clinging with shivering, white-knuckled grip to his own boat’s sail. The sky was filled with an overwhelming and blinding glow, stinging his eyes as much as did the ocean’s brine. Yet through peeked eyelids and migraine he still looked about him, spying naught but a few other haphazard floating bits, spread out and drifting from him by yards; and dark rolling waves tipped with gentle white foam; and endless, expansive, divine, unyielding white sky. For how long he had been submerged, he knew not; nor did he know how in Heaven above he still breathed, nor why. But with the salt-wind in his lungs now still all the same, Starbuck gazed to the heavens above and pondered.

_ Where is the ship? _ he thought, glancing about once more. But it was not long before he remembered for himself his own question’s answer. The very same vortex which had dragged him down, only mere moments -- or perhaps hours? -- before, had taken the mighty Pequod with it too. What was left of her, the last dregs of her glory, bobbed like brit and sea-grass and waterfowl among the foam, Starbuck among them. The ship is not sinking; the ship is already sunk. 

And naught but Starbuck; he saw nary a trace of his comrades; no veteran, nor greenhorn; his fellow mates, his harpooner, his crew, his sailors, his dear captain, all disappeared. All for certain dragged down to the depths below, to Hell or Heaven beyond. _Dear God,_ he cried, _will their souls know rest? Turn thy countenance upon them, O God, give them peace, for they knew not what they did. Show them mercy, O Lord, as thou have shown to me._ _Surely, that poor Starbuck still lives, is a gift from thy hand. But why Starbuck alone, why Starbuck?_

He coughed seawater from his tired lungs and gazed again at the sky. The sun blazed and burned down, perhaps punishingly, or perhaps indifferently.  _ Is this mercy, O Lord, _ Starbuck asked,  _ or a trial? Perhaps this is punishment for my weakness, my cowardice. Was I wrong to obey? Could not mine own hand have prevented this tragedy? _

He blinked once and squinted through the glow. He saw before him two mouths trained soberly at his own; that from his captain and that from his captain’s musket. _ There is one God that is Lord over the Earth, and one captain that is lord over the Pequod, _ said he to Starbuck.  _ He would have shot me once, _ thought Starbuck. The musket, loaded, powder in the pan. For what? For speaking out, for his insolence. And how had the grateful Starbuck returned that mercy, for his life noble Ahab spared and his advice heeded?  _ By thoughts of mutiny, _ Starbuck conceded, mournfully. In his hands he felt the phantom weight of that musket, saw again through his own eye his captain through the sight. What greater dishonor than such capital disobedience?  _ He would have killed me once, _ thought Starbuck.  _ And now he has doomed me again. _

But the sting of salt in his nose, the dryness in his throat, the light in his eyes, all reminded him he lived yet still.  _ Why above have thou spared me yet, O Lord? To teach me this lesson? _ He alone survived; by God’s hand he lived, all the others drowned, their only mercy granted being that of a swift and noble death. But by whose hand were those cards dealt, by God’s? by Ahab’s? or by Starbuck’s? _ For sure, all matters of men are by the grace of God, _ reasoned he,  _ but was it not by Ahab’s own command that the whaleboats lowered away after the White Whale? Was it not by Ahab’s own will that the Pequod pursued not the filling of her oil casks and her return home to Nantucket, but his own monomaniacal vengeance? Sure as God put Ahab and Starbuck on this Earth, so too did God put Moby Dick within her waters; but was it truly God’s will that Ahab and the whale be so wedded to each other in fate and fury? Was it God’s will that Starbuck comply, to his own doom and to the doom of the good men of the Pequod, noble and savage alike? Could not poor Starbuck have prevented this grand tragedy by committing another? _ His fingers curled round the boatmast as though training a musket on its target, with one poised to squeeze its trigger and strike the hammer.  _ He would have killed me once, and he has killed us all now. But Starbuck might have prevented this; Starbuck might have reasoned with Ahab, or ignored his command, or, God forbid, done him in. Then we would not have chased our deaths. Then we would have lived to hunt whales, and not to be killed by them.  _

He saw before him the face of old Ahab, and felt burn in his chest for the first time an uncharacteristic fury.  _ Twas Ahab who doomed the Pequod! and twas Ahab who doomed her crew, and twas Ahab who left poor Starbuck adrift at sea!  _

Yet just as suddenly as this anger washed over him, so too was it followed by a deep regret and guilt:  _ no, tis Starbuck who doomed Starbuck.  _ For young Starbuck was a coward who did not stop old Ahab; and old Ahab was a fool who ignored young Starbuck’s warnings. Their sins and grievances alike had been laid out before God, and judged. 

He floated on for hours, countless hours. Only God could say how long for certain, for there was nary a soul around for miles upon miles, and poor Starbuck grew further delirious and tired with time, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Many times he slipped away from himself, lost from his mind and his wits, unconscious; only to drift back awake to reality again after so long. The day hours grew long and the daylight drew thin. Soon enough the blinding light was replaced by a deep, impossibly quiet and still darkness. 

He thought of his crewmates; he thought of Pip, small Pip, joyful little Pip, mad Pip. Lost at sea before Starbuck now. Who could have known what young Pip saw, what young Pip felt, how young Pip cried as he floated alone those many hours? How could anyone have known, til Starbuck now experienced it for himself. There was no longer any difference between sea and sky; the same stars that twinkled above twinkled in the waves below and around him, noble Starbuck swimming in a sea of stars.  _ Ocean, sky, ocean-sky. Tell me. Does the ocean ever rest? Does the sky love the sea? One feels so small out here, out in the biggest place there ever was. Too big to know, to understand; too big to call home, or a grave; too big to store your grief in, you’ll be lost. Can water be a coffin? Can the sky be a tomb? _ Starbuck felt his own mind going. Was this clarity or insanity? Or was there never truly a difference? He cried out to God but God was already there.  _ That’s what the ocean is, _ Starbuck thought as he drifted away once more.  _ It’s God. We are all in the hands of God.  _

He awoke again some time later. He ached and burned and stung and felt more heavy than he’d ever felt before in his life. He knew not for how long he’d floated there, nor how far he’d gone, but he did know his life was drawing thin. And there was nothing to do but float, and wait, and watch, and think, and pray. The sky was once again filled with a blinding brightness, but this time there were clouds, grey and solemn;  _ fitting weather for a funeral, _ he thought, with a smile. There were still bits of debris from the Pequod’s wreckage about him, but it could pass great time between sightings, and even longer still the distances between them and himself. Even had he the strength to paddle to them, he would not have, for he no longer trusted his visions as tangible reality, or at least not as true hope for survival. This ocean was to be his final resting place; soon enough God would surround him utterly and entirely and take him to his life beyond. And he was glad for it; but til then, he waited. 

Perhaps a great distance off, on the horizon, Starbuck spotted a peculiar cloud, billowing white and resolute against the greys and blues above. He smiled to himself, thinking now of his own boy at home, his young son, his Daniel, waiting patiently every day for his father to return home from the sea. Running every morning to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail on the water. And his son’s mother, his wife, his loving Mary, coming up the hill alongside him. Three long years it had been since Starbuck had seen either of them. How big, how strong, how handsome his boy must have been by now! How beautiful and tender his Mary seemed to him now! How he could imagine himself now, the Pequod pulling into the Nantucket harbor, disembarking, setting foot on dry land again, and holding his arms out wide to wrap round his son, to pick him up and swing him round and hug him close, to smile and laugh and kiss his wife again, and to tell them of his great voyage, wonderful and terrible. Starbuck grinned, and laughed, and cried joyfully at the thought. He could feel it, he could feel it now.

In the distance he saw the cloud billowing, bobbing like a great ship on the sea. Sea spray danced around her. She seemed like he felt, like a proud mother bringing her child tight to her breast in protection, and love, and sorrow. She wept her silver tears for what she lost, and what she found. Starbuck cried for her too, and smiled. She drifted again out of sight, disappearing below the horizon on her way back to home or Heaven. She was a comforting vision to noble Starbuck, who now closed his eyes and turned his face to the bright sun, peacefully awaiting his own return; to rejoin his friends and family, to hear his crewmates’ voices, to embrace them and laugh once more, and to see the face of God.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! <3


End file.
